A quick cut of @WellsFargo CEO John Stumpf answering my questions. He doesn’t seem to know a lot about how his company is run. pic.twitter.com/Oaf6AGAjtM
— Rep. Keith Ellison (@keithellison) September 29, 2016
Just as timely as it was 3.5 years ago – some things never change, do they?
“Sneaky” comes to mind to describe the government and the banksters regarding two settlements between US banks and government regulators who alleged that the banks were guilty of widespread abuse of the foreclosure system that allowed banks to seize homes from defaulting borrowers. The banksters agreed to pay out more than $20 billion on Monday to resolve claims arising from the mortgage crisis.
View original post 1,699 more words
Right on! Well, there goes Bank of America…cause they’re all joined at the hip.
Throughout Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf’s rough day in front of the House Financial Services Committee, multiple representatives called for the bank to be broken up, suggesting that the megabank is simply too big to manage effectively.
But as the five-hour hearing neared its conclusion, the ranking member of the committee, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., went beyond her fellow representatives’ calls to break up Wells Fargo, stating that she is going to actually move to break up the bank.
“I’ve come to the conclusion that Wells Fargo should be broken up,” Waters said. “It’s too big to manage and I’m moving forward to break up the bank.”
According to a represenative from Waters’ office, Waters told reporters after the hearing that she plans to pursue legislation to break up the bank.
Wasn’t it Al Capone they took down on his IRS violations? Pick ’em a part bit by bit… Yup!
The Los Angeles city attorney has reached a $13.5-million settlement with U.S. Bank to resolve allegations that the nation’s fifth-largest bank operated as a slumlord and allowed hundreds of foreclosed properties to deteriorate, fostering crime and blight in L.A. neighborhoods slammed by the housing crisis.
The settlement, announced Thursday, requires the Minneapolis-based firm to maintain its foreclosed properties in “accordance with all applicable laws and standards for two years.” A full-time bank employee will work with city agencies to resolve code violations of foreclosed properties across Los Angeles, the city attorney’s office said.
U.S. Bank spokesman Dana E. Ripley said the bank would be working…
View original post 16 more words
The numbers at the heart of the scandal at Wells Fargo (WFC) are staggering. Over 5,300 employees were fired for creating millions of accounts without customers’ permission, under intense corporate pressure to meet high sales targets.
Zoomed out to a massive scale like this, and with lawmakers focused on finding and chewing out the higher-ups who might be responsible, it’s easy to forget this fraud ensnared actual human beings.
Yahoo Finance spoke to a few of them to get their stories about their relationships with Wells Fargo, and how they learned they had accounts created without their knowledge or permission. We also learned about what it was like to deal with credit bureaus to make sure the bogus accounts didn’t blemish their credit reports.
Take Micheline Maynard, a journalist and author based in Boston, one of the millions of Wells Fargo victims…
View original post 167 more words
And I wonder when the Wells Fargo former and current employees will sue the bank for OT (certainly they did OT) that they most likely weren’t paid for their time when they were pressured by upper management for sales goals to open fake accounts for customers who had know idea of these accounts.
The lawsuit (Polonsky v. Wells Fargo Bank & Co., BC634475, California Superior Court, Los Angeles County ) filed on Thursday, alleged that “Wells Fargo fired or demoted employees who failed to meet unrealistic quotas while at the same time providing promotions to employees who met these quotas by opening fraudulent accounts.”
The lawsuit on behalf of people who worked for Wells Fargo in California over the past 10 years, including current employees, focuses on those who followed the rules and were penalized for not meeting sales quotas. It accuses Wells Fargo of wrongful termination…
View original post 144 more words
What a wicked web they weave when first they practice to deceive.
Onc’t they was a little boy would n’t say his pray’rs—
An’ when he went to bed at night, away up stairs,
His mammy heerd him holler, an’ his daddy heerd him bawl,
An’ when they turn’t the kivvers down, he was n’t there at all!
An’ they seeked him in the rafter-room, an’ cubby-hole, an’ press,
An’ seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an’ ever’wheres, I guess;
But all they ever found was thist his pants an’ roundabout!
An’ the Gobble-uns ’ll git you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!An’ little Orphant Annie says, when the blaze is blue,
An’ the lampwick sputters, an’ the wind goes woo-oo!
An’ you hear the crickets quit, an’ the moon is gray,
An’ the lightnin’-bugs in dew is allsquenched away,—
You better mind yer parents, and yer teachers fond and dear,
An’ churish them ’at loves you, an’ dry the orphant’s tear,
An’ he’p the pore an’ needy ones ’at clusters all about,
Er the Gobble-uns ’ll git you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!It’s getting so close to Halloween…ya know? Don’t you just love James Whitcomb Riley?
I recently spoke to a former Wells Fargo employee turned whistleblower about the ongoing issues of fraud and predatory banking practices implemented by the bank regarding the ongoing housing and mortgage fraud. Beth Jacobson is a former high level employee of the bank, who told me:
“In 1998, I was hired by Wells Fargo Home Mortgage as a ‘Home Mortgage Consultant’ or loan officer. I worked for Wells Fargo Home Mortgage (‘Wells Fargo’) until December, 2007. After a period of time, I was promoted to Sales Manager. I told DOJ over six years ago about Wells Fargo’s quotas. At that time it was subprime loans. A loan officer had to fund three subprime loans per month. If there was a quarter when that didn’t happen, they were fired. So the result is prime borrowers were put in subprime loans so that the loan officer kept their job.
[John] Stumpf…
View original post 785 more words
From Elizabeth Warren facebook:
I was on a plane recently, waiting to get off when the guy in the row in front of me turned around and said, “You look a lot like Elizabeth Warren.” (I get that a lot.) He laughed when I told him I was, and he said he was a big fan (always nice to hear). But then he paused and said he didn’t think that I should be so angry with the big banks. I told him: “The truth is, I AM angry.” And then, because I’d just read it, I added: “And if you read David Dayen’s new book, you will be too.”
Chain of Title is a careful documentation of the mortgage fraud at the heart of the 2008 financial crisis, and the story of how three people fought back. If you’re looking for a…
View original post 38 more words
Wells Fargo & Co.’s board was accused of breaching its duty to investors in a lawsuit that also names Carrie Tolstedt, the executive whose community banking unit created unauthorized customer accounts to reap extra fees.
The suit adds to the mounting pressure on Wells Fargo and Chief Executive Officer John Stumpf since the bank agreed Sept. 8 to pay $185 million in fines and penalties to resolve regulators’ allegations it created more than 2 million deposit and credit-card accounts without customers’ authorization. Analysts and congressional leaders have called for the bank to claw back Tolstedt’s compensation and for Stumpf to resign.
Board members’ refusal to scale back Tolstedt’s retirement benefits is “a breach of their fiduciary duties to shareholders,” according to the complaint, which may be the first such investor case. The suit, in which Stumpf is a defendant along with Tolstedt and the board, asks a San Francisco state…
View original post 24 more words
NEP’s Bill Black appears on The Real News Network and explains why criminal prosecutions of executives time after time are not happening. The video is below and if you would like to view with a transcript, click here.
Deadly Clear 